Kitchen nightmares: Rachel Herz unravels mystery of repulsion

Melissa Leong, Postmedia News04.05.2012

For a short time, Vij's Restaurant roasted and ground crickets into flour to make paratha, an Indian flatbread. The dish was extremely popular. Their sister restaurant, Rangoli, makes cricket pizza by sprinkling the whole roasted critters on naan dough.

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When European colonists discovered lobster in the 1600s, it was considered food for the poor. The sea vermin was used as fish bait and fertilizer and fed to orphans, slaves and prisoners. Servants rebelled. Massachusetts, eventually, passed a law forbidding the serving of lobster to prisoners and servants more than twice a week. "A daily lobster dinner was deemed cruel and unusual punishment," Rachel Herz writes in her book, That's Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion. Today, lobster is a decadent dish reserved for special occasions, say a birthday or anniversary or a last meal on death row.

Throughout her book, Herz uses such history lessons to illustrate that disgust is not innate — it is the last emotion that children experience and must be learned. Culture defines what is disgusting. For example, Herz, an expert on the psychology of smell and emotion at Brown University, grew up in Montreal, where poutine is popular; however, the slimy, cheesy treat might be considered gross in Asia where some people think cheese is repulsive.

Herz began exploring disgust after being invited to judge the National Rotten Sneakers Contest in Montpelier, Va. She spoke to the Post about judging "The Hall of Fumes," watching gory films and eating spiders.

Q: How did inhaling the stench of dirty sneakers lead to your book?

A: I was psyching myself up: What are these smells going to be like? Are they going to be so horrendous that I’m going to pass out? When it came to actually judging the sneakers, it was bad but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected it to be. That actually made me think about how much one’s mind is involved in our experience of disgust. (I’m leaving on Sunday to judge the contest for the fifth time.)

Q: How do you explain people’s fascination with disgusting things?

A: The nugget underlying disgust is our terror of death. When we are experiencing things like horror movies, it’s so extreme, it’s kind of cathartic. We see these grotesque, brutal, sickeningly violent things happening but it kind of is a release of our pent up fears. Another reason is the concept of benign masochism. We like to do a variety of things that on the surface seem stupid or painful, for example entering into a habanero-eating contest, bungee jumping. They’re not physically dangerous. So we get to do something that is unpleasant, but it’s safe. Also, there’s this perverse attraction to those things. That’s why lust and disgust are highly connected.

Q: What were you most surprised by in your research?

A: I didn’t realize the extent that disgust was involved in the way we treat other people, especially when we are trying to incite genocide. The thing that is interesting about disgust is that it’s extremely catchy. It’s very easy to turn something that is neutral into something disgusting. (Do you like eggs? You know, that’s chicken embryo you’re eating.) If I’m a powerful person and I call a group of people "cancerous tumours" or vermin and rat, it is easy to be compelled into thinking that way about them; as soon as that happens, they become subhuman and something you want to exterminate.

Q: We can be easily turned off of something, but you also believe that we can be turned on by something that previously repulsed us.

A: The possibility of eating bugs may really exist in our lifetime, especially with ecological things happening to the planet and resources being depleted. We may have to resort to other forms of protein. The thought of eating tarantulas, crickets and weird-looking worms is repulsive to me, but for some vegetarians, eating cows, chickens and fish is disgusting. It’s how you interpret the thing that makes it appealing or not.

Description: For a short time, Vij's Restaurant roasted and ground crickets into flour to make paratha, an Indian flatbread. The dish was extremely popular. Their sister restaurant, Rangoli, makes cricket pizza by sprinkling the whole roasted critters on naan dough.

Flavours: Crunchy and nutty, not unlike pumpkin seeds

Delicious treat: Chicha

Where: Ecuador

Description: This aperitif can be made from a masticated blend of boiled maize (or yucca root) and human saliva. It might liven up a party — get everyone to chew some grain, spit into a communal jug and then save the brew for later.

Flavours: Warm, thick, lumpy, vinegary beer

Delicious treat: Hakarl

Where: Iceland

Description: To make traditional Hakarl, you must bury a Greenland shark carcass in a shallow pit and cover it with gravelly sand. After it decomposes for two to five months, the flesh is cut into strips and hung to dry to form a nice, crisp crust.

Flavours: A pungent, ammoniac, fishy odour

Delicious treat: Natto

Where: Japan

Description: This sticky, slimy, chunky, fermented soybean dish is a popular breakfast staple.

Flavours: The marriage of ammonia and a tire fire

Delicious treat: Sannakji

Where: Korea

Description: An octopus is eaten whole and alive, though choking is a serious hazard as the tentacles stick to everything. The octopus can also be served freshly chopped and is eaten while the morsels are still wriggling.

Flavours: Chewy, sticky and briny

Delicious treat: Casu marzu

Where: Sardinia

Description: Known as "rotten cheese" or "maggot cheese," cheese fly larva are added to fermented sheep cheese. The acid from their digestive systems breaks down the cheese’s fats, making it soft and liquid. The dish is then served with thousands of live maggots. Those who eat it with the maggots cover the cheese with their hands to prevent the critters from jumping off.

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